


Sorry About All The Death

by maggiemerc



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiemerc/pseuds/maggiemerc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They may be out of the woods, but that doesn’t mean they’re out of the muck. Post-8x24 “Flight.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm Just A Girl, Missing My Brother

Left to her own devices and told simply to “stay awake” Meredith sat perfectly still. Sometimes she’d go into a crying jag. Staring straight ahead and just expelling all the grief her body could no longer contain. Derek and Cristina, surprisingly the most able bodied among them, had gone to look for more wood and supplies amongst the wreckage. 

“We need to build another fire,” Derek had muttered before disappearing into the darkness. Sheer determination moved his feet when he should have been passed out from the pain.

So it fell to Arizona and Meredith to keep them all awake. Jerry remained conscious. Fear over his loss of mobility kept him awake. But he wasn’t a good person to talk to. The fuselage limited his ability to hear and he constantly asked them all to repeat themselves.

Mark was worse off. He could barely muster words. Breaths came laboriously. Arizona kept letting her hand fall to his neck. She found comfort in the slow beat of his heart. He was still alive. Which meant she was still alive. Her leg. Her leg was a constant source of agony. Every movement, every thought devoted to it wrought up pain so severe she wondered if she could stay awake through it.

And across from her sat Meredith. Looking every minute more like a victim of trench warfare and less like the savvy doctor she knew.

Slowly Meredith’s face crumbled again. Sympathy welled up in Arizona. It was a pain she knew all to well.

“I’m sorry,” she swallowed compulsively, it kept the metallic tang of blood at bay, “about Lexie.”

Dull blue eyes turned from staring into the darkness to look at Arizona. “What do you know,” they seemed to ask. “How can you understand,” they accused.

“I had,” she coughed, “I had a brother. Timothy—Tim. We did…we did everything together.” Another coughing fit. She caught the glob of blood in her hand and surreptitiously smeared it on her jacket. Out of sight and out of mind. “He died.”

Meredith blinked. The point of the story slowly sinking into her traumatized mind.

“It won’t go away. It will never stop hurting. But one day—one day you’ll realize that for the first time in a long time you didn’t think about her. It’ll be the worse feeling you’ve ever felt.”

A dark laughed bubbled from Meredith’s lips, “Worse than this?”

“I grew up with my brother. We were so close in age we were—we were practically twins. We moved a lot because of the Marines—sometimes,” she leaned back against the fuselage and her head clanged against the paneling, “sometimes I still cry. In the shower.”

“My sister’s dead.”

“I know,” the tears. The ones she used to reserve just for Tim. The ones that she thought she’d only shed for him and then for Nick, welled up, “Lexie was amazing. She was going to be great.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry about your brother.”

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

In the darkness feet cracked on wooden branches. Arizona thought of hide in seek in a forest outside the base. Just her and Tim. She thought of Lexie’s smile. How giving she was. She’d had a bigger heart than any of them.

And now she was dead.


	2. I'm Just A Girl, Staring At Another Girl

She didn’t know Dr. Robbins well. They were co-workers sure. They ran in the same circles and knew the same people. They had the same woman as the godmother of their respective children. But she didn’t actually **know** the woman.

She was always so perky. Like… No Lexie never would have had a pink scrub cap. Hers would have been bad ass. It would have shamed other surgeons the moment they saw it. Not like Robbins. The woman was the opposite of bad ass.

Except. Well Cristina seemed okay with her. And Derek seemed to have a fondness for her. And she was actually a really excellent surgeon. Meredith’s definite go to surgeon if anything happened to Zola. And Alex. She actually got Alex to behave without using sex or sad Izzie cancer eyes. That was a feat right?

But she wasn’t Lexie. 

Derek and Cristina had built a new fire. It wasn’t very good. Really it was as sad as the last one. Though they’d actually gathered enough wood to keep it going for more then the time it took for a few dried leaves to burn. The pilot and Robbins gave tips. Someone suggested using the broken flare from the flare gun so they built it again. This fire held a little better. Maybe not enough to be seen from the sky—but these guys couldn’t even see what had to be a huge gash in the tree line from when they landed.

Their odds were not looking good.

Better than Lexie’s. Irrational laughter bubbled up in her chest and she closed her eyes to ward it off. Lexie was dead. Dead. Gone. Like George. Like her mother. Evaporated into nothing. She wouldn’t baby sit any more. Wouldn’t watch her niece grow up.

And oh God, she was going to have to tell her father. And their sister. The one she always forgot about. And they’d stare at her accusingly. Wonder why she survived when the good sister died.

Derek must have sensed something was wrong. He reached out with his good hand and took hers and gave it a squeeze.

Across from them Robbins stared into the fire while softly stroking Mark’s hair. He seemed to take comfort from the physical affection. The look of death that had governed his face since Lexie left them had relaxed into something more peaceful. Just when she started to worry it was too peaceful Robbins’ fingers drifted down to take his pulse before returning to their place in his hair.

On the other side of Meredith Cristina popped her gum and stared angrily into the distance. They each had their own way to handle their circumstances. Screaming. Yelling. Obsessions with shoes. Cristina had settled into a new and largely unnatural state for herself. She was **furious**. It rolled of her in waves and made even Derek, who was so worn down by fatigue and pain he couldn’t keep his eyes open, wary.

“Should we,” Robbins coughed weakly and wiped her hand against the ground, “sing or something? To stay awake?”

The pilot fidgeted in his seat, “I know a camp song.”

All five conscious doctors visibly shuddered at the idea.

Robbins started laughing. It was just short of hysterical and cut short by another coughing fit. 

“What’s so funny,” Cristina asked. Her patience had long disappeared.

“I was just thinking about Alex. Taking this trip away from him was supposed to be punishment.”

She laughed again and Derek grunted in amusement. Another coughing fit wracked her body and she tried to curl into it but winced when her shattered leg wouldn’t allow it. She paused when it passed. Seemed to stare at her hand a long moment. Then she wiped her hand on the ground.

Meredith had to ask it, she didn’t want to. She suspected she knew what the answer would be. But she had to ask it. “Arizona?” The other woman looked up. “Are you okay?”

Cristina shifted on her right and looked from her to Robbins. Derek tried to watch her as well, though sleep was fast becoming his enemy and his eyes drooped close again. 

“I’m fine.”

“Because you have a compressed femur fracture. There’s a chance you could—“

“Throw a clot. Have a pulmonary embolism,” she challenged, “I know the risks Meredith. I also know that even if that was the case there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”

Silence. The snap of leaves turning to ash in the fire.

“Is it?” That was Cristina. Her voice like tempered steel.

Arizona looked away. Tears flickered for a moment on her cheeks. “Short of breath, feels like someone is sitting on my chest and I’ve been coughing up blood since somewhere,” she looked up into the night sky, “around noon I think. And I just started running a fever. But that,” she tried to reposition herself and failed, “could just be infection from the break.”

In a hospital Meredith would have known exactly what to do. She knew the exact dose of heparin. Knew the exact way to treat the infection and even, thanks to Callie, how to save the leg. In a hospital Robbins would be uncomfortable for a few days, stuck on crutches or a walker for a few months and then back in shape.

But out here. Out here her chances dwindled. The PE **could** fix itself. But they were already fighting the odds. They’d crashed in a plane and then survived it with no loss of limb.

So Cristina, emotionally exhausted and so close to breaking Meredith thought she could see the shards of her falling to the ground, said what had to be said. “I’m sorry.”

Robbins coughed again and looked down to the man in her lap. “He doesn’t need to know.”

They all knew why.

  


####

Pounding on the door woke her up. Someone was pounding so hard she thought it might fall off its hinges. She shuddered at the explosive sound of it. Then a shiver ran through her. She was cold.

Oh right. She was nearly naked. A veritable palette of sexy paints were laid out on the night stand. She’d been waiting for her wife. The clock read past ten. She wrapped her barely there robe around herself to answer the door. Then thought better of it and grabbed her usual robe off the bathroom hook.

“Hold on,” she shouted.

Sofia, woken by the noise, started making sounds in her room.

Damn it. Of all the times for Arizona to be late and forget her keys. Irritation overwhelmed the desire to drag her wife into the apartment and take her right there on the couch.

She swung the door open, “Arizona next time you want to leave you keys at the hospital—“

But it was Owen. The Chief. Cristina’s husband. A bearer of bad news. Always, always bearing bad news. His burden was etched into the deep lines of his face and it looked as though grief itself was about to bring him to his knees.

Something cold and terrifying shot through Callie.

He opened his mouth and his words hung in his throat.

She shook her head. The day coming into focus. She’d kept her distance. Didn’t call Arizona. She knew her wife needed space to deal with her grief. But she hadn’t answered Alex’s calls either. And it was well past the time she should have been home. She would have called. Mark would have called.

She could feel her body shaking. Cold fire leeching every bit of warmth she’d ever known. “No.”

Her wife was alive. Her wife was on her way home. She was happy. She was healthy. Her wife was alive.

“Their plane went down.”

His voice was raw. His own tears had stripped everything away.

“When?”

He shook his head.

“Owen—“

“They’ve got helicopters looking for them. It was a short flight. So the distance is small.”

She spun around. Ran to her purse and pulled out her phone.

“I already tried—“

She ignored him. Calling her wife was easy. As natural as breathing. She hit send and waited. The switch to voicemail was abrupt. Mark. 

“Callie.”

She hit send again. Mark’s baritone. 

Her phone flew out of her hand. Smashed against the floor. She wanted to hit something. Wanted to scream. Wanted to run. Her hand clinched into a fist. Nails bit into skin. Oh God Sofia. She’d hear. She’d remember this. Kids always remembered the worst moments. The ones you wanted them to forget.

Owen rushed and caught her just as her knees gave up holding her. “We have to—“ she choked out.

He stroked her hair. “I know.”

“Owen. She hates flying.” And camping. Her dad used to drag her and her brother out camping. He was a perfectionist and it made her miserable. “Yes I can probably skin a squirrel Callie, doesn’t mean any human **should**.”

“They’re looking.” 

Callie tried to stand. “We should look.”

“Callie—“

“My wife, Owen. My best friend.”

He knew. His wife was out there too. Her best friend. Their friends. Their loved ones.

She didn’t want to cry. Arizona was scared and hurt and out there in the darkness waiting for Callie to keep up her end of the bargain. To be there. To be strong when she couldn’t. She didn’t want to cry.

“Anyone else know?”

If she talked. If she kept her brain moving maybe she could skirt the tears. Avoid them. Hold them off just a little longer.

Owen shook his head. “Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.”

Someone squeezed someone else’s hand. They shared a look. “They’ll be all right,” she heard herself say. They had to be. When she was at death’s door Arizona was by her side. She never left. She never believed in anything but Callie. She could do the same. “When was the crash?”

“This morning.”

She closed her eyes. Beat back the tears with physical force.

“I—I told them to send my calls to voicemail. Said if it wasn’t about someone dying—“ Owen’s voice cracked.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I should have—“

“They had a flight plan? Someone was looking right? Someone figured it out before you?”

He nodded.

“Then they’ll find them. Maybe they already have. Maybe some…farmer found them and is giving them a ride back to Seattle in the back of his truck.”

Owen laughed.


	3. I'm Just A Girl, You're Just An Idiot

Callie came out of Sofia’s bedroom with daughter on her hip and found Owen standing to leave. “Did you hear something?”

He shook his head.

“Then sit.”

He sat abruptly. She put Sofia in his arms and went to start a pot of coffee. He was startled by the baby but quickly a little smile appeared.

“She likes you,” she noted. And indeed her daughter was cranky from being woken up but already delighting in having a new person to play with. She blindly reached for his face and slapped him with chubby little hands.

Callie and Owen had sat on the couch for a good fifteen minutes trying to process what was happening. She’d started to look for a helicopter company to charter and he’d reminded her that search and rescue was out there and better at finding people then a charter copter and a couple of doctors ever would be.

She had to agree. But she still felt…inert. Her wife was **missing**. The father of her child was gone. Even Cristina. It was as though they’d vanished and all she could do was sit in her apartment and wait.

Owen told her about the calls he made. The people he forced into action. State police. Park services. Both airports. Everyone who could look was. All they could do was wait. So she brought her daughter out into the living room and started some coffee and sat with Owen.

He tried to hand Sofia back when Callie returned to the couch but she refused. She loved her daughter and could find comfort in her easily but Owen, he looked nearly ill.

He settled Sofia into his lap and stared straight ahead.

“I fired Teddy.”

Callie…she didn’t know what to say to that. Teddy had mentioned her job offer with the Army but she’d also said she was pretty sure she wasn’t taking it.

“She was staying for me and I couldn’t do that to her.”

Silence.

“You’re an idiot.” It just slipped out. Honest. He opened his mouth to object but she repeated herself, “You’re a good guy. But you’re an idiot.”

“She was going to ruin her career to make me feel better.”

“You’re still an idiot.”

“She didn’t need to stay for me,” he challenged.

“Owen, you remember George right? I was married to that guy. I **loved** that guy. I thought I was going to build a family with that guy. But then he went and he hurt me so severely I thought I’d never get back up again. And the worst was he was a good guy. He loved so absolutely he didn’t understand others. He was an idiot. Like you.”

“And I’ve watched you and Cristina this year and I don’t know what’s going on but I know you’re being stupid. You’re forgetting relationships with Cristina or Teddy or whoever are more than just love. It takes work. You think Arizona wanted a baby? You think I wanted yellow walls or someone who’s way of processing is to runaway for three days? No. But she worked at seeing my side of things and I worked at seeing her side of things and we let all the warm happy lovey dovey feelings fill in the rest. You communicate and love come from that. Not the other way around.”

“So…I shouldn’t have fired Teddy?”

“Oh no. That was the right call. She was a hot mess staying here.”

“Then…”

The coffee finished and Callie stood, “I just wanted to call you and idiot for all this stuff going on between you and Cristina.”

  


####

In college Arizona got a cold that wouldn’t go away. She’d call her mom and cough loudly into the phone and her mom would sigh and tell her to go get it checked out already. She refused, content in her education as a pre-med student. It got worse. Turned into bronchitis. Miserable, miserable bronchitis. A cough that sounded like a dying beast of burden and a pain that spread through her lungs and straight into the bones of her chest. Arizona had an irritatingly low threshold for pain and at one point moaned that she might die.

Tim had kicked her foot. “Suck it up sis!”

So she sucked in a lung full of air that seemed to pass straight through a cavern of fire to oxygenate her bloodstream and she loaded up on painkillers and eventually it resolved itself.

This cough was just as frustrating. She knew its cause too. With a break as bad as hers and no treatment in a hospital a PE wasn’t so much a possibility as an inevitability. It wasn’t the taste of blood that she couldn’t escape or the pain in her chest that annoyed her. It was the cough. She couldn’t sleep because of it. Couldn’t get comfortable. She’d cough and feel it in her leg. The bone exposed to air seemed to throb with each cough. She knew that wasn’t really what was happening. Knew that beyond a doubt. But it didn’t matter. All of her hurt. Her body was a myriad of bruises and contusions and the cough exacerbated each and every ache.

She was grateful Cristina had built the new fire further from her place in the fuselage. The smoke would have just made it all worse.

Far above their heads birds tweeted as the sun cast a dull light into the sky. Morning was coming. And she’d been stuck on the ground for 24 hours. Unable to do much more than shift and curse and wonder.

Someone shuffled in the bundle of fabric and bodies that was Cristina, Derek and Meredith. The center body moved forth from the collective and Meredith stumbled to her feet. She put a few more branches on the faltering fire and picked up a half full bottle of water left on the plane stairs. Arizona watched her talk quietly with the pilot. She gave him some of the water then capped it and came over to them.

“Mark’s still with us,” Arizona said. Her voice was raw. Screaming, crying, laughing, thirst and her now persistent cough had wrecked it.

Meredith nodded. “How are you?” Her voice was scratchy too.

“Tired. I can’t—“ she coughed, “sleep very well.”

Meredith leaned against the fuselage and held out the bottle. Arizona took it and ignored the way her hand shook. She was a surgeon. Her hands never shook. They were never wracked by the tremors. Meredith politely said nothing.

“Jerry?”

“Everyone’s fine.”

“If we get back soon Callie will take care of Derek.”

Meredith said nothing.

“She’s going to freak over my leg.” She tried to force a laugh. It didn’t work. “Loves a good fracture.”

She was babbling and she knew it but it was better than the silence. Beside her Mark shifted in his sleep and sighed softly. She reached—more out of habit than anything else—to check his pulse again.  

“You said you had a brother.”

Her hand froze. Stubble on Mark’s neck scratched her fingertips.

“Meredith…”

“I never had a sister. And then one day Cristina’s intern introduces herself and she’s Lexie and suddenly. Suddenly I have a sister. And I can’t even—“ she was trying not to cry. Meredith Grey never cried. Woman was a rock from all Arizona had seen. “She’s gone.”

“I know.”

“I never told her. Not nearly enough. I didn’t love her enough. I didn’t encourage her enough. I was—“

“You were a **good** sister.”

“I wasn’t even there when she died.”

Meredith crumbled. Arizona reached for her but couldn’t move further without aggravating her leg. A violent cough bubbled up and erupted out of her. Her leg twitched and her chest ache and pink phlegm coated her hand.

In an instant Meredith was checking on her. Moving close enough. “I’m fine,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Meredith sat back on her heels and tried to fight off another jag of tears. “I don’t even **know** you and I’m—“ She took a deep breath.

Arizona drank some more of the water and leaned back. She was having more difficulty breathing. And they were at a higher altitude too. It made her a little faint. 

“I don’t…know you either, but I’m cold and tired and I could really use a blanket.“

Meredith abruptly stood. She retrieved her blanket from near the fire and came and sat next to Arizona. The cloth had warmed so close to the flames and the smokey smell, absent the actual smoke, seemed to sooth her lungs. Meredith draped it over the both of them and mirrored her pose.

She was calmer now, “How’s the PE?”

“Worse than bronchitis ever was.”

The sky was growing paler. The sun coming closer. At some point it would actually figure out that rising was what it was supposed to do and it’d slowly fight back the chill. The fog would come, grow heavy and wet and dangerous and then it would evaporate. And then, maybe then, they’d be rescued.

“You’re favorite surgery?”

She smiled. Meredith was a good doctor. Keep the patient occupied. 

“Hopkins. A set of conjoined twins.”

It was a good story. A case she could base a career on. And Meredith, Meredith was a good listener.


	4. I'm Just A Girl, Everything's Changed

Meredith was woken up by the gentle touch of her husband’s hand. He was stroking her cheek and softly saying her name. With her eyes closed and his hand on her cheek she smiled. Then she remembered the awful dream. Where the plane crashed and Lexie died and everything, everything was wrong. 

She opened her eyes and beyond Derek she saw the interior of the plane and for just another blissful moment it really was all a dream and they’d just landed in Boise and she was going to scrub in on an incredible surgery.

But then she smelled the evergreens and smoke. And heard the chirping birds—ignorant to the wreckage they oversaw. She felt an unfamiliar presence leaning on her side and when she tilted her head to look at it she realized it was Dr. Robbins, her bloody face lightly resting on Meredith’s shoulder.

Derek said her name again. He looked awful his beard was half formed and he was pale with only the dark bruises under his eyes and the smear of blood on his forehead giving him any color.

“Meredith, Jerry’s dead.”

Jerry? The pilot. “How?”

He was so grim, “I don’t know. I woke up and he was gone.”

She shifted and tried to look past Robbins, “Mark?”

“He’s all right for now but Robbins isn’t.”

Robbins. She looked at the woman and only then noticed just how pale she’d gone in the night. Her skin was almost an ashen gray and her lips were blue. “She’s cyanotic.”

“Cristina’s looking for another oxygen tank. I tried but,” he shook his head.

But he looked awful. It was hypovolemic shock. Only the night had worsened it. She moved over. “Sit down next to Robbins. Try to stay warm. I’ll go help Cristina.”

He nodded weakly. “Meredith,” he said when she started to limp away. She paused. Looked. Waited for him to say something.

But he couldn’t. And neither could she. “I’ll be right back.”

She found Cristina standing on tip toes using a stick to try to hit something over head. “Cristina?”

“I found the other oxygen tank.”

Meredith followed Cristina’s eyes. The other oxygen tank, which she’d hoped they wouldn’t need, was resting between two branches overhead. She wanted to laugh.

“Don’t,” Cristina said, reading her mind. “It isn’t funny. It’s sad. **This** is sad. We’re stuck in a forest dying off one by one because seven years ago we were too stupid to choose another residency program.”

“Cristina…”

She swung the stick hard against the tree with a grunt and it snapped in two. “No! No. I’m done. That guy died in his sleep Mer. He was fine and he’s dead now. Lexie is dead. Mark has half a hairspray bottle in his chest, Robbins looks like one of those blue people from Appalachia and Derek is in hypovolemic chock. They’re dying and the one thing we need besides rescue and a fully stocked hospital is stuck in a frickin’ tree!”

She chunked the rest of her stick clear into the forest and screamed. It was this terrifying guttural explosion of fury and Meredith found herself, quite against her will, stepping back.

“You know, I didn’t want to leave? Mayo, I mean, it’s good but Seattle is good too. Only Seattle is insane. Owen cheated on me and tells me he loves me and you’re trying to—to hold onto a past you should hate. You wanted me to stay in a place that killed our friends. Nearly killed both of our careers? For what? For friendship?”

“Cristina—“ she was a broken record. She knew it, but she was in shock. Not even shock from being in a **plane crash** just shock at the absolute unravelling of her best friend.

“I wanted to get in, finish my residency and get our Mer. I didn’t want friends. I didn’t want a husband. I sure as hell didn’t want you,” she snarled. She then looked up into the trees. “And the oxygen tank is still in the frickin’ tree!”

  


####

She woke up happy. Genuinely happy. The kind of glee that she hadn’t felt since Nick had shown up. She opened her eyes and took stock of her condition and still couldn’t stop smiling. Laughter, not unlike that which had accompanied her earlier shock, bubbled up again. It wasn’t quite as hysteric though.

“Robbins?”

Somehow Meredith had been switched out for Derek. Which only made her laugh more.

“She’s cracking,” Mark croaked. 

He’d woken up too. Good! They were all awake and alive and damn it—“The sun feels great doesn’t it?”

Neither Mark or Derek responded.

She sucked in a deep and gratifying breath and didn’t even care when it was followed by a cough so powerful she thought some lung came up with it. Who cared? They were **alive**.

“I wish Callie were here. She kind of likes camping. I mean, she’d hate a lot of this, but cuddling up under a blanket in the early morning sun? She’d love that.”

“Definitely cracking.”

Derek got up and leaned over Arizona.

“McDreamy your eyes are super pretty.”

He frowned, “Damn it. Hypoxia.”

Uh oh. She knew what that meant. “Guess we shouldn’t have given Mark all the oxygen huh?”

He reached out to take her pulse and she leaned back.

“You know it sucks being a doctor sometimes. Because clearly I’m happy even though a friend is dead and my bone is sticking out of my thigh and my wife isn’t here. With my other symptoms that probably means my oxygen content is super low and I’m dying. Which sucks? But I actually feel awesome. Super, super, **super** awesome.”

Derek stood up and called out for his wife. He started to leave, but stopped. He knelt next to Arizona. “Robbins, you’re going to make it okay?”

She coughed. “I hope so. But it isn’t really that bad right? I get to see Lexie and Timothy and Nick will be there in a few months. Ooo and George. I’ll finally get to have a conversation with Callie’s ex-husband.” Wait. But what if— “Unless there isn’t an afterlife and dead is dead. In which case this super happy feeling I have is really misplaced.”

Derek looked so sad all of a sudden. A frown marring what she felt, objectively speaking, was a pretty gorgeous face.

“It’s okay Derek.”

He tried to hush her.

“No. Everyone always gets a deathbed confession. I should too.”

“No, listen.” He pointed overhead.

She did listen.

She could hear it.

Another reason to be happy.

Help had finally arrived.

“And you guys thought I was euphoric because I’m not getting enough oxygen to my brain.”

  


####

They got the call not long after sunrise. The crash site had been found by another plane. Helicopters were in route and the survivors, if there were any, would be transported to the closest trauma center. Which was, in this case, Seattle Grace Mercy West.

Callie and Owen had scrambled. He started calling everyone in while she grabbed Sofia’s stuff and they ran across the street, separating at the entrance so he could prepare the ER and she could drop off Sofia and change out of her robe and into scrubs.

She’d actually, for half a stupid second, thought about now running across the street to the hospital in nothing but a bathrobe and negligee wasn’t professional or appropriate, but the urgency she felt, the need to be there as soon as her wife was off the copter, removed any sense of decency she still possessed.

She tugged on a trauma gown and gloves she’d pulled from the ER and ran up to the helipad where Bailey, Webber and the three stooges residents were waiting on the copter along with Owen. She made a beeline for him.

“What’d you hear?”

“Two dead. One female and one male. The rest are injured.”

She felt like hyperventilating. Like collapsing to the ground and never getting back up. One female dead. It could be Lexie or Cristina or Meredith. And it could be Arizona. And the man. The pilot? Mark? Two people were dead and her whole world might be undone.

“Dude, are you okay?”

Alex was looking at her quizzically and behind her Kepner and Avery shared similar looks of bemusement and concern.

“Callie,” Bailey asked.

And she realized something awful. None of them were suitably terrified. They were just treating normal traumas. It was a normal day. She looked sharply to Owen, “You didn’t tell them?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Told us what?” Bailey again. She was frowning. Trying to work out the puzzle Callie and Owen presented her with.

Owen looked down and away. “Their plane went down. The survivors are currently being helivaced here.”

“Their plane?”

Everyone started speaking. Shock. Horror. Anger. It was a conflation of emotion erupting on the helipad.

“Everyone **quiet** ,” Webber said. He was evoking his “Chief” voice. One he’d retired a year before. But it worked. They all went quiet. “Now,” he said, directing his question to Owen, “what do we know?”

“Two dead. One male. One female.”

Someone they loved was dead.

Bailey went still. Kepner looked like she was going to cry. Avery and Alex both just looked confused.

And then the helicopter was landing and Cristina was leaping out looking like death herself, come to herald the bad news. Her shoulder was in a sling and she was shouting things out. Telling them about the injuries. Saying it before the paramedic could speak. Meredith limped out after her and Derek stepped out. Stumbled. Fell. They’d squeezed two gurneys in. One held Mark. The other, the other held her wife and she was blue and still and for a brief moment she thought they’d brought her home a corpse to bury.

“Lexie’s dead,” Cristina said. Announcing it for all of them to hear. Stunning them for a moment. Meredith started crying again. Derek tried to stand but couldn’t. Mark looked sightlessly up at the roof of the copter and Arizona coughed, blood spattering her mask.

Her speech to the residents they day before sprung up immediately in her mind and she hated herself for saying it. For being happy. For thinking there was a future for anything.

Everything had changed.


	5. I'm Just A Girl, This Is Just A Bone

“Get her out of here.”

Callie was about to go cage fighter on Bailey. She was standing in the doorway studying the scene and demanding Callie leave her patient. Her patient who had an open femur that needed to be repaired in addition to other damage she hadn’t even seen yet because they needed the x-rays back.

Alex looked from Bailey to Callie and pushed the heparin. Kepner continued to clean the wound.

“Callie,” Bailey was being insistent.

“I’ve got this Bailey.”

“No, you don’t.”

Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath and refused to look at the woman’s face. If she looked. If she saw the blue lips and cuts on her face she’d definitely lose it.

She called out orders which Kepner and Karev obeyed fluidly. Bailey came closer. “I know you want to do this. I get it. But you can’t do this.”

“I’m the best. My wife deserves the best.”

“She does.”

“I can stay calm. Get me in the OR and—“

“And I don’t doubt you’d do a beautiful job. But your wife isn’t just a regular open femur repair.” She placed a calm hand on Callie’s shaking one.

“I can do it,” she insisted.

“And if something goes wrong?”

She turned on Bailey. She liked her normally. Considered her an excellent colleague and even a friend but at that moment she desperately wanted to hit her. How dare—Arizona would live. She survived a plane crash. Was stuck out in the wilderness for over twenty-four hours. A simple surgery would be easy.

“Callie,” her wife gasped.

She stopped what she was doing and leaned in toward Arizona who was weakly trying to remove her mask. Carefully she pushed her wife’s hand away. “Don’t move. We’ve got you Arizona. Okay? I’ve got you,” she whispered intimately.

“Don’t,” she sucked in air and looked at Callie sleepily, “don’t argue with Bailey.”

“I need to help you.”

“Just,” she coughed into the mask and the monitors above them made irritating and dangerous noises, “just stay right here. Please?”

She nodded. Her wife’s hand was trying to rise towards her and she grabbed it and brought it to her lips. “I’ll stay,” she said. She could feel hot tears clawing their way up and she swallowed compulsively to keep them down. 

Arizona smiled and held Callie’s gaze. 

Around them the doctors and nurses got back to work. Bailey took over as lead. The x-rays came and Callie held her wife’s hand and tried to look at them. The damage was bad. Extensive. 

“Bailey,” the other woman turned around. “I’m in the OR.” Her voice brooked no discussion.

  


####

Owen’s face was inscrutable as he examined Derek’s wound. “Did you do this,” he asked Meredith.

She looked at the giant safety pin wound around the flesh of her husband’s arm. It looked less like trauma care and more like prosthetics for a Hollywood movie. 

“We had to stop the bleeding,” she said softly.

“Good job. You probably saved his hand.”

She hadn’t realized how concerned she’d been about that until Owen said it. Relief flooded her system and she slumped against the wall.

“We’ll take him up to the OR and fix it, but he should be okay.”

“The shock—“

“Is treatable,” he said patiently. Meredith should have known that. She was an excellent surgeon. She knew things like how to treat hypovolemic shock and grotesque lacerations. But she also knew how to treat crush injuries and look how that had turned out for Lexie.

Owen continued to exam the wound and called for someone to page Torres. She remembered Robbins and how she’d last seen her. Pale. Blue. Nearly dead.

Callie crashed into the room with her mouth open and ready to unleash something acerbic and possibly cruel. Then she seemed to see Meredith leaning against the wall. She looked at Derek and almost—almost softened. 

She and Owen started talking in low voices. She was going to be in the OR while Alex, Kepner and Bailey worked on her wife. Guiding but not actually doing the surgery. Owen was protesting. She lowered her voice further and whatever she said turned the chief of surgery pale.

He distractedly motioned to Derek’s hand. Meredith heard something regarding the nerves and felt the tears start up again. Callie studied the wound.

“I can fix it.”

Owen seemed surprised.

Callie turned around to stare at Meredith. “I’ll fix it.”

They prepped him for surgery and Meredith limped through the hall in a daze. Cristina had disappeared. Mark was in surgery. She wandered into the room where Robbins was being treated. Kepner was watching over her. 

“We’re trying to stabilize her before we go in,” she said.

Or they were waiting for Callie.

She limped over to the chair next to Robbins’ bed and took a seat. The other woman was dozing and looked quite restful. Someone had cleaned all the wounds on her face and replaced the splint on her leg.

“How’s Zola,” she asked.

Meredith realized she hadn’t seen her daughter yet. Panic welled up and she looked to Kepner, of all people, for answers.

“She’s down in the daycare. Sofia’s there too.”

Arizona closed her eyes again.

Kepner offered to check out Meredith’s leg and they left Arizona to rest. After she’d been treated and given a pair of crutches she went down to the daycare. Her daughter was happy to see her and toddled over with her little arms outstretched. Meredith had trouble kneeling, her thigh twinging in pain. But then Zola was wrapping her arms around her mother and happily cooing in her ear and for a moment everything was okay.

She was happy. Healthy. Alive. She had her daughter. Then there was the scream of the engines and Lexie’s still features and the sky open and ominous overhead and she was crying and clutching her daughter and wondering how the ache would ever disappear.

  


####

There was already infection when they finally got in there. Malicious bacteria consuming the bone from the inside out. Bailey and Kepner and Karev started on the surgery while she finished with Derek and when she ran in they were preparing to install hardware. 

“We’re thinking external fixation,” Karev said. It would help with the infection.

She stepped closed. Looked at her wife’s bone. Her actual bone. She’d seen hundreds—maybe thousands of bones. She’d seen rotted ones and healthy ones and ones so delicate they crumbled at her touch. But she’d never seen her wife’s bones. She’d marveled at their structure and the way skin and muscle fleshed it out to create the woman she loved, but she’d never actually seen—it was primal. 

She knew that thigh. Knew it intimately. She liked to run her hand across the surface of it and watch the goosebumps and listen to her sexy inhalation of breath. It wasn’t meant to be distorted and broken beneath the lights of the OR with Kepner and Karev and Bailey violently intruding upon it with screws and drills and ugly metal instruments. That perfect thigh wasn’t meant to be pushed aside like a lump of flesh to gain access to the shiny white bone beneath.

Her wife was sleeping though. Oblivious to the intrusion. A tube was taped to her mouth and her eyes were closed. The cyanosis had dissipated leaving her looking only peaked rather than dead.

Arizona needed her. She didn’t need a wife who threw up in the OR or crumbled under the pressure. She needed a wife who built legs from nothing. Finding strength in the future Callie redirected her attention to the leg before her. Not her wife’s. Some other woman’s leg. Same age and blood type, but not her wife.

“External fixation sounds good.” She could do this. It was a teaching opportunity. One she’d oversee. She’d guide their hands. Show them the solution to the puzzle an open femur presented. She’d heal her wife and be her rock. 

  


####

She finally found Cristina alone in the resident’s lounge. Her makeshift shirt sling had been replaced with an actual sling and she was trying to pull on her pants one armed.

Meredith clicked and clacked over. “Here let me—“

“I’ve got it,” Cristina said harshly.

She was still in her mood. Still humming with anger. Meredith wanted to say something. She could always figure something out. They were on the same wavelengths. Two halves of one whole. But the hurt was just piling up on Cristina and instead of reaching out she lashed out while pulling her whole self in.

She finished putting on her pants and started rooting around in her locker.

“Cristina?”

“What?”

“You really are leaving aren’t you?”

Cristina sighed. Her shoulders sagged. “You should too.”

“I meant what I said.”

She was her person. She always would be. She could lose Derek or Zola. She could be flung to the far reached of the earth. Cristina would still be her person.

She seemed to wince at Meredith’s statement. She looked over her shoulder and was more broken than she’d ever seen her. The last time—the last time there had been scissors to cut the dress from her body. They didn’t have the luxury of that now.

“Get out Meredith. Go to Boston. Be happy.”

She shouldered her bag and moved past Meredith, fingers grazed fingers. Tactile warmth. The sparest form of comfort they indulged in. And Cristina was gone. And the tears started up all over again.

She’d lost her best friend and her sister in a day.


	6. I'm Just A Girl, We're Not Talking About It

It was the absence of pain that woke her. After more than twenty-four hours of constant agony with every breath—every movement—the absence of it was startling. Her eyes fluttered open and gave her views of a room. Not the open blue sky. The smell of smoke was more a memory than a presence. Her own screams of pain—the mournful weeping of Grey—had all been exchanged for the constant white noise of monitors and the low murmur of hospital staff.

She tried to move but stopped when the familiar ache found her again. It wasn’t as bad. Before it had been sharp and constant and excruciating. The sort of pain one couldn’t expect to ever go away. Now it was dull and seemed to spread over her entire leg. She had to tilt her head a little to look and was only a little surprised by what she found. Her leg was being braced. Metal was embedded in the skin and the whole leg was a myriad of colors quite unlike those normal for her skin tone. 

Panic.

Breathe Arizona.

It took her a minute to realize that while her left side was in pain her right wasn’t. In fact there was only warmth and with a tilt of her head she saw why. A dark head was resting beside her arm, and her hand was wrapped up in the other woman’s. She tried to squeeze it and watched as the little movement woke the other woman who looked up sleepily.

“Hey.”

Callie blinked back tears. “Hey,” she said quietly.

Arizona tried to say more but her mouth was dry and gummy and her tongue felt inert. Callie reached for some water she’d left on a tray and held the straw to Arizona’s mouth. “Here. You were intubated for a while.”

The water was warm and brackish. Straight hospital water. But it washed away the funky taste in her mouth. Still, the simple action of drinking was exhausting and she slumped back against the pillow afterwards.

“Everyone?”

“Mark and Derek are still here. Derek should be discharged in a day or two. Meredith and Cristina both checked out the first day.”

She nodded. Looked back down at her leg. Callie softly stroked her arm. 

“You’re going to need a few more surgeries to fix everything, and we had to put in a central line to treat the infection.”

Arizona nodded again. That’d teach her to have a fondness for the hospital.

“Sofia’s down in the daycare right now. She’s been doing pretty good. When you’re ready I can bring her up.”

“You?”

Callie seemed to frown but then it turned into a smile. “I’m good.” She leaned across the bed and pressed her lips to Arizona’s cheek before resting her head on the pillow next to her.

Being mindful of her IV Arizona carefully reached up to stroke her wife’s head. Neither said another word. 

  


####

There were a lot of people at the funeral. Derek was there with his bandaged arm. Cristina came. Her flight to Minnesota was the next day. Alex and Bailey. Owen. Richard. Not Mark or Arizona. They were still both in the hospital, one sedated so his body could heal and the other stuck in a frankenstein rig for her leg. But Callie came with Sofia and watched Zola while Meredith accepted condolences. So many condolences. Old interns and nurses. Patients. Co-workers. Her father sobbed and refused to talk and the other sister stayed long enough to make sure her sister was in the ground.

Alex insisted they go out for drinks afterwards but with Lexie and Cristina both gone it didn’t feel right. She had one drink and went home to a husband and daughter both fast asleep.

She was a Grey. A Grey could handle a crisis. Why the rest of the world burned a Grey would stay cool. A Grey didn’t cry in the shower. Didn’t cry on the way to work. A Grey didn’t avoid her problems. A Grey faced them head on.

But a Grey usually wasn’t so exhausted. A Grey didn’t have to battle a husband’s depression after Harvard pulled his offer. Didn’t have to raise a child. Didn’t have to see the pity on faces in the hospital and hear the whispers abruptly stop when she entered the room.

Well, most Greys didn’t.

Alex ended up staying after the crash. He muttered something about Robbins and tried to eat lunch with Meredith every day. April and Jackson stayed as well. April was hired to pick up the slack of losing so many doctors. It was temporary but she was turning into a ruthlessly efficient surgeon to prove she should be hired long term.

Meredith wasn’t allowed into surgery. They insisted she see another trauma counselor. Insisted that they all see one. So she and Derek came in every day and talked with the counselor and waited for her to sign a slip of paper saying they were functioning humans again. 

She was surprised when the most peace she found was in Robbins’ room. She was a constant source of elation while the rest of them wallowed in depression. She always had a smile, but it was never so perky as to be off putting. There was always that grounded sadness in her eyes.

She even seemed okay with talking about Lexie. She’d share stories about her brother and listen to Meredith talk about her sister. She didn’t wince at the sound of Lexie’s name. Didn’t turn despondent like Derek or resolute like Alex.

Callie found her one day, pulled her into an empty room. “You and Arizona seem buddy buddy.”

“She’s been telling me about her brother. Helping.”

Callie’s eyes narrowed, “She doesn’t talk about her brother.”

Meredith shrugged. Until the plane crash she hadn’t even known Robbins had **had** a brother.

“Just…she doesn’t process stuff like the rest of us Grey. Don’t push her.”

“I’m not.”

She wasn’t. They’d sit and talk about surgeries and about their spouses and so what if a lot of their conversations were about siblings they’d lost?

  


####

Arizona didn’t process grief like Callie did. Callie embraced her grief. Moved through the stages like a pro mourner. If something bad happened she cried. She got angry. She moved on. Arizona…Arizona stewed. She was stubborn. She hated crying and she hated grieving and she’d avoid it. It was her hallmark. She ran when Callie stood strong. She turned taciturn when the world wept. When there was a storm raging—when George died or the hospital was filled with ghosts of a gunman’s victims Arizona was business as usual. Seemingly untouched by it all.

And she wasn’t processing the plane crash. Callie could see it plain as day. She had somehow found Meredith and they were feeding each other. She was being strong for Meredith and Meredith was using her as a poor man’s Cristina.

And Callie definitely, absolutely, positively, assuredly wasn’t jealous. Just because Meredith now knew stuff about Arizona’s childhood that she wouldn’t even tell her **own wife**? Nope. Definitely not jealous.

She’d almost brought it up with Derek but he was a walking zombie mindlessly driven to get full function back in his hand. And she couldn’t mention it to Mark. He spent his days staring listlessly at his ceiling. The only time she’d seen him smile or do something more than stare was when she brought Sofia by. She was terrified to mention the crash. To talk about Lexie. About any of it.

Arizona might have talked to her, but no she was too busy running from her problems by trying to fix Meredith’s and it was royally pissing Callie off.

  


####

“So can I walk on it?”

Her wife squeezed her shoulder and shared a look of bemusement with the ortho resident who was fitting it. 

The resident cleared his throat, “Uh. No? No. You’ll need to be in this brace for the foreseeable future.”

She pouted. Callie knelt down next to her and took her hand, “Crutches and rehab. I’ve been talking with Owen about getting you some surgery time though. Nice and short surgeries.”

“So I’m stuck on crutches and with appies until I can walk by myself?” She’d sailed through her three sit downs with the trauma counselor. Only after insisting she do them in the first place. She was finally being discharged. The external fixation rig had been removed and internal fixation implemented when they went in to build her knee. Callie had lovingly called her her best work ever which was kind of creepy. Sweet though. 

The resident double checked the brace and left. Callie came around and held out her arms. “Ready to get up right?”

“You know it!”

She reached for her wife’s hands and started to pull her. She could see the sharp relief of flexing muscles in Callie’s arms as she held herself stable, only barely tugging on Arizona. “You can do it,” she said confidently.

She hadn’t expected all the soreness made apparent by the exertion. She could already tell she was feeling sweaty, but she readjusted her grip on Callie’s hand and pulled herself up. 

Callie kept her at arm’s reach and grinned. “You did it.”

“I’m a scary badass when I want to be.”

She laughed and left Arizona standing so she could retrieve the crutches while Arizona put all her weight on her good leg.

“I took all the rehab equipment home yesterday. So you’re set up for many days on the couch having your knee bent by a machine while you curse me for being born.”

“Yea,” she said weakly.

“And I set up your appointment with the physical therapist. Tuesday.”

She took the offered crutches and leaned on them gratefully. Her good leg thanked her.

“How’s the brace feel?”

“Like it’s going places I only want you?”

Callie smiled, “Maybe later. If you’re not exhausted.”

“I’ve now gone a month without sex. Exhaustion isn’t going to stop me.”

Callie looked like she was going to disagree but didn’t say anything.

“Nice leg Robocop.”

They both turned at the voice and found Meredith escorting Sofia and Zola who were both now fully into the walking phase of infancy. Her daughter smiled and tried to figure out which mom she wanted to run for, but that was decided when Callie effortlessly knelt down to greet her. Sofia made the dash and Callie fluidly swung her up into the air.

“Say hi to your mom baby girl.”

She held Sofia out to Arizona and her daughter gave her a messy kiss and tried to put her arms around her. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to drop her crutches and grab her daughter and she very nearly made that ill advised choice, but Callie pulled Sofia back before she could.

“You check on Mark?”

Meredith nodded. “He and Derek are in there on the phone with Derek’s mom.”

Arizona and Callie both tried to digest that. Meredith shrugged—confused herself.

Callie swung Sofia around so she was sitting on her hip and gave Arizona a peck on the cheek, “I’m gonna run and say goodbye real quick. Grey can you get a wheelchair for her?”

“She seems excited.”

Arizona watched Zola, who was attempting to climb into the chair Arizona had vacated.

“I think she’s missed having adults in the house.”

“Or she’s missed her wife.”

She smiled wistfully. She was really looking forward to getting out of the hospital and getting home. Even if it mean that awful machine that moved her knee for her and Callie walking on eggshells and pretending she wasn’t.

“I’ll be excited when I get to go back to Peds. Having Alex there unattended is terrifying.”

“Bailey’s been picking up a lot of Peds cases just so she can watch him. Oh. Guess who called today?”

She tilted her head.

“Cristina.”

“Is she…”

“Half of me thinks she misdialed.”

“Meredith.”

“Come on. Let’s get you rolling out of here.”


	7. I'm Just A Girl, Wanna Go For Coffee?

The plane was flying and then there was the most violent shaking she’d ever experienced, and she’d once rear ended the back of a truck and sent her girlfriend through a windshield. She knew violence. This was worse. 

The sky was screaming. The plane. The people. The sky was there. In front of her and the front of the plane was moving further and further out of reach and then suddenly she was flying and the front of the plane was closer but she missed it. Something struck something else with a loud wet smack that reverberated straight through her bones. She slip across the ground like someone had buttered her face.

And the sky was still screaming. Everything was quiet. Everything. All the other noises had disappeared. She was alone. All alone. Her body was fire and the sky was bearing down on her. The branches of the trees seemed to bend at the sky’s command. Like they were reaching out to take her home.

And the screaming sky was suddenly the gentle fan of her bedroom. The acrid smell of burning fuel and shredded metal became her sheets. Her wife was leaning over her and looking terrified. She ran a cool hand over Arizona’s face. Whispered to her how it was all okay.

Her leg. Her leg was on fire still. Everything else was in the present but her leg was flying through the air and sending pain up through the marrow of her bones.

Callie scrambled off the bed and hit a switch on the flexor they’d hooked up before bed. The knee stopped bending but the pain was still…Callie carefully removed the machine from the bed and dashed into the kitchen. She saw the light of the refrigerator reflect off the door jam and Callie returned with an ice pack which she gently placed on across Arizona’s upper leg.

She hopped over her wife lithely and knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”

She swallowed. Nodded. She could feel the sweat on her neck. "Do you want me to get something?"

She shook her head. Stopped and considered. "Water."

Callie left off the bed again and soon returned with the water. She carefully supported Arizona's head so she could drink without further jostling her leg. Her hand was cool on her neck and her fingers, always so confident and strong methodically massaged the tight muscles there.

"Is that the first time that's happened," she asked. Even in the darkness Arizona could see her wife's fear and concern.

"Yes."

And it was true. She'd been so busy in the hospital and on so much medication. She'd been driven to get out and now that she was...the reality of what happened bared down on her.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She shook her head. Finished her water. Callie set it on the dresser and grabbed a pillow from the closet. She watched as she carefully lifted her leg and set the pillow beneath it. The cool cloth instantly brought further relief to the limb and she fell back against her own pillow and sighed in relief.

Callie returned to her side of the bed and rolled over so she could watch Arizona. She reached out and traced Arizona’s profile with a single cool finger. “You scared me.”

“It was the—it’s my leg.”

Callie clearly didn’t believe that and looked on sadly.

“It’s nothing.”

“You were in a—“

“I lived.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Mark nearly died. Lexie did die. I lived. I always seem to end up relatively unscathed.”

Callie frowned. They were talking about more than just the plane crash.

“It isn’t a competition Arizona. No one is hurt better or worse. You don’t get to bury your own problems because you think someone else’s are bigger.”

She turned to look at her wife and in the darkness her eyes were pitch black. “Why are you so smart?”

Callie smiled, “Lot of practice. And you’re trying to distract me.”

“Can we,” she swallowed, “can we not talk about it? Just for tonight?”

She scooted closer and wrapped her hands around Arizona’s hips and laid her head on Arizona’s shoulder. “Sure,” she said—her breath a whisper across Arizona’s breast bone, “just for tonight.”

  


####

Meredith stepped into the rehab room which reeked of plastic, disinfectant and sweat. Off to a corner Arizona was doing exercises with one guy and even though it didn’t look very difficult she was covered in sweat. She didn’t even acknowledge Meredith—too focused on her work.

Which was all right. She was there for her husband. Derek was sitting at a table working on his arm and like Arizona the most mundane of tasks had him covered in sweat. There were dark marks all over his deep gray shirt and his hair, normally perfectly coifed, was greasy and sticking out every which way. 

She took the seat next to him and watched him. He didn’t notice her at first. Just worked on his exercises, but as he went through his reps her presence must have become more difficult to ignore because his sharp blue eyes kept darting in her direction before he finally stopped his work and sat back with a loud exhalation of air.

“What?”

“Don’t you think you’re pushing it too hard?”

“Kind of difficult to do surgery with only one hand.”

“You should take your time. Go downstairs. Zola is—“

He glared. His jaw tightened. “I’m fine,” he said curtly.

She reached out for his hand. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew when he got all grumpy and internal it was better to leave him alone or he was likely to hit another wedding ring into the forest with a bat, but she missed her husband and she missed a life that didn’t exist on a thin sheet of ice so she reached for his hand. 

He pulled it back. Opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to remember that they had an audience. That normally wasn’t enough but Arizona had stopped her work and was watching them curiously. He looked from her, back to Meredith and did some bizarre half laugh half sneer that seemed wildly out of place for the proceedings.

Then he left.

Later she ran into Robbins again. She was still in her rehab clothes but had a bright pink back slung across her shoulder. Sofia was walking along side her and they kept stopping so the small girl could stabilize herself by grabbing the crutch closest to her.

She’d noticed in daycare that Sofia had been walking a bit but her parents still usually carried her in for daycare. Arizona squeezed her daughter’s hand. “We’re making our first attempt at walking all the way home today.”

Meredith raised an eyebrow.

“I mapped out a couple of stops on the way. Some for her and some for me.”

That sounded a little more reasonable.

“Derek all right?”

Meredith knelt down and poked Sofia who delighted at the attention. “He’s good. Just grumpy.”

“Callie used to throw fits during rehab.”

Callie also ended up hospitalized because she pushed herself too hard. Neither woman mentioned that.

Above her Arizona took a deep breath, “Do you want to get coffee?”

Meredith looked up, puzzled.

“It’s just. Teddy was my coffee buddy and she’s gone and Cristina was your coffee buddy and she’s gone and I know you and I are—well we don’t know each other and apparently you and Callie have a whole history but I need someone to talk too and I know you do too.”

She blinked. Somewhere Cristina heard that speech and cackled at it before glancing at Meredith and wondering if she was really going to listen to that. But that was somewhere else and if Meredith was honest she **was** lonely and hanging out with Arizona Robbins was probably better than watching her husband mope or just hanging out with her single friends. So she was perky. So what? She’d revealed herself to have a wicked dark side she kept buried beneath all the pink and she could finally have Zola do play dates with Sofia without all the awkward years of history she had with Mark and Callie.

“We can do coffee,” she said with a smile.

  


####

“They’re doing coffee Mark.”

Mark was sitting up in bed and petulantly stabbing at his jello. “Who is?”

“Arizona and Meredith.”

He stopped his destruction of the jello to stare straight ahead and try to process that.

“Right? They should not be friends.”

“That’s just—that’s weird.”

“We need to get Cristina back. Or we need to get Derek to be Meredith’s coffee buddy because Arizona is **my** coffee buddy and she never has coffee with me.”

“You’re jealous of a platonic relationship Torres.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Have you thought about maybe telling your wife you miss her?”

She couldn’t do that because then Arizona would truck out the time she spent a day in the woods after a horrific plane crash—one of which she apparently remembered everything—and they’d argue over it and then they’d argue over how Arizona knew what Meredith was going through and how Callie couldn’t possible understand and they’d both go to bed sullen and unsatisfied.

She hated it.

She hated planes and Meredith Grey and Lexie for dying and she hated herself for being so damn petulant while her best friend was still laid up in a hospital bed and her wife was only sort of walking.

She wanted to cry. That’s what she really wanted to do. She missed the before and she wanted to mourn it. Heck she wanted to mourn **Lexie**. She wanted to escape the morose place everyone around her and turned to. She wanted to get up and move on because that’s what you did when the world really sucked but it seemed like everyone else was content to sit in their little gray and sullen world where things were left unsaid and people became friends who would **never** be friends and happiness was a memory of anticipation while lounging on her bed in her lingerie. 


	8. I'm Just A Girl, And Sex Is A No Go

Mark was finally released from the hospital and though more than one person had accused Arizona of being a runner she could safely say she had nothing on Sofia’s father. Days out of the hospital he had dumped Julia and announced a desire to find the nastiest and most disfigured people alive in the US and “fix” them pro-bono. With the help of his trusty sidekick Avery he started driving up and down the coast interviewing prospective patients. 

He did not mention Lexie and Callie informed her that it was wise not to mention her either. He did, however, start picking up women at Joe’s. Lots of women. Lots and lots and lots of women. It got to the point that she and Callie essentially became Sofia’s sole caregivers. Mark stopped by. Kissed her on the head. Said hello. Sometimes he even cooked for all of them like old times, but he never stayed. 

Every day her fear of spending a lifetime with Mark Sloan became more and more unfounded.

“He was having a threesome.”

“Really?” Arizona tried to sound vaguely scandalized by Meredith’s news but Meredith picked up on her less than shocked tone.

“Okay maybe Mark Sloan and a threesome isn’t crazy. But in a supply closet? For over an hour? I had to send interns in gloves and gowns in there to sterilize the place afterwards.”

Okay that was a little shocking. Arizona shuddered. “Which supply closet? Because knowing Mark and these new interns I could probably get pregnant just walking in there.”

“The one off the ER.”

The one no one lingered in. That was where Reid died.

“At least he’s having sex. I haven’t been able to even think about it.” She tried. Callie would come out of the shower completely wet and nude and Arizona would have the intellectual desire to get all hot and bothered by the sight. But then she’d watch Callie walk by. No limp. No scars. Perfectly healthy.

It would promptly remind her of her own leg. A gimpy and useless piece of flesh that required a brace and crutches to function.

Not so sexy.

“Derek decided to use sex as a reward for his rehab. Which means I’m not getting any until he’s back in the OR.”

She glanced sympathetically at Meredith.

“Could he scrub in on your appy this afternoon? Just have him do suction or something.”

Arizona wasn’t about to invite the preeminent neurosurgeon in the US to do suction for a procedure that an intern could do. She also wasn’t about to tell his wife that she wouldn’t do it either. Besides, “I actually have to skip the appy. Mark bailed on dad duty to head to Portland to meet with a patient so I’m on mom duty.”

“So you’re saying I should take your appy and force Derek to assist so I can finally have sex again?”

She shrugged. That could work. And then maybe Meredith would stop talking about sex all the time. Not that Arizona didn’t love talking about sex, because she did. Hell she talked about it more than most of the people she talked to did. She had no shame and she had no hang ups. She also had no libido whatsoever lately and she really didn’t want that fact to slip out one day while she and Meredith did coffee and pretended they were friends.

Because once you started talking about your waning libido with someone besides a sex partner it meant you were friends for life. And as far as Arizona was concerned her new and altogether pleasant relationship with Meredith was temporary. A way for them to overcome their grief and find a way back into the world. They’d be closer afterwards. Play dates wouldn’t be as awkward as they’d been before.

But she didn’t actually **want** a “person.” She had one. Callie. But she couldn’t talk to Callie about the sex problem either. She was fragile now. Exhausted. Caring for Arizona, Sofia, **and** Mark had torn her down. But her wife refusing sex because she couldn’t get in the mood? That would just about ruin her.

  


####

Someone on their floor was cooking dinner. Chicken it smelled like. Slathered in curry. As Mark was still out of state and there were only two apartments on the floor her lips curled in excitement. Arizona was cooking. The first time she’d tried after the crash.

She opened the door to the apartment and found Sofia slowly moving towards the door to greet her. She chunked her keys over her daughter’s head onto the couch and reached down to pick her up.

“Hey baby girl. Where’s Mommy?”

From the other side of the couch an out of breath Arizona responded, “Mommy is doing her exercises.”

Putting Sofia on her hip she came around to get a better view.

No. 

A splendid view.

Arizona’s large brace, a fixture in their daily lives, was lying unused next to the yoga mat Arizona was laying on. She had a resistance band wrapped around the foot of her bad leg and was flexing against it. The muscles of her arms and leg stood out in sharp and glorious relief and every perfect edge and soft swell glistened with sweaty exertion.

And Arizona, apparently wanting to seduce Callie in the most round about way possible, was wearing tiny gym shorts and a skin tight tank top that clung to her.

“Mommy is trying to give other Mommy a heart attack in that outfit.”

Arizona grunted in acceptance of the compliment and continued to work.

“Would you look at your Mommy Sofia. When parents have gone this long without sex that outfit is just criminal isn’t it?”

Sofia, being only a little over one had no idea what Callie was talking about but giggled at being spoken to in such a pleasant voice.

She directed her next sentence to her wife in a more adult tone, “She’s all fed?”

“Yup,” she grunted.

She ran Sofia back to her room and came back, throwing her jacket onto the couch with her keys and knelt next to Arizona. “Need some help?”

“I’m fine.”

“ **You** might be.” She caught Arizona’s leg in her hand and stroked her from knee to inner thigh and back again.

Arizona’s leg hung in mid air as she caught the lusty timbre of Callie’s voice. “Are you deeming me fit and healthy to have sex Doctor Torres?” She was trying to flirt but it sounded fake. Like a person in a play trying to flirt rather than her wife. Arizona’s voice got low and she turned playful when she flirted. She grinned and giggled. She didn’t raise and eyebrow and act so…straightforward.

“Maybe.” She took another long moment to appreciate the view. Continued to stroke the perfect and sweaty leg. Then frowned. “Your knee feels a little swollen.”

Which was natural so shortly after surgery. Arizona raised an eyebrow.

“More than usual,” she amended. She gently manipulated it. “Any discomfort?”

“Pretty regular. And the Doctor Torres act has suddenly turned way less sexy.”

Callie hopped up quickly and ran to retrieve an ice pack from the freezer. She called over her shoulder, “I’d love to turn this into a scene from Personal Best, because, seriously, that’s a definite fantasy of mine, but you’re pushing that Callie Torres art piece of a leg way too hard.”

Arizona sat up. “You don’t **own** my leg,” she said sourly. She was staring pointedly at the limb being discussed. Specifically at the multitude of scars.

Callie handed her the ice pack and watched her gingerly rest it on the swollen flesh. “No. I own the butt it’s attached to. A butt I very much miss.”

She looked up at Callie wistfully. “I miss you too,” she said softly.

The timer on the oven dinged.


	9. I'm Just A Grrl, You're Into Grunge

It was quite by accident that Meredith found herself at the same nurse’s station as Owen. She just looked up and he was standing there scanning a chart. He nodded politely but said nothing and she went back to her work and they both pretended that they didn’t want to ask the other about Cristina.

She never called. She never emailed. She didn’t even text. Meredith called her. Sometimes she’d even catch her and they’d chat about nothing at all and then hang up and pretend like the distance wasn’t destroying everything.

She missed Cristina. She missed her so much it hurt. And she hated Cristina. Because she was so busy missing Cristina she sometimes forgot to miss Lexie. And Lexie couldn’t answer the phone—couldn’t avoid phone calls. More than once she’d be on her way home thinking about dinner and would dial her sister’s number out of habit. Even after she removed the number from her phone she’d do it.

They’d both always been so busy. She could go whole days without seeing Lexie and when she was at work it was easy to think that she was just one surgical suite over. It was when she stepped into the house. Trudged up the stairs. Lexie’s room was unchanged. The bed was unmade. There was a pair of dirty underwear in the corner and a dress thrown over the closet door. Her hairbrush needed cleaning and her toothbrush was still in the bathroom.

When Meredith was at home it was so damned easy to forget her sister was gone. But inevitably the rush of realization would strike her. Immobilize her. And she’d see her sister lying beneath the plane. 

But not as she’d laid peaceful with Mark’s hand in her own. She’d remember the last moment as they dragged Mark back to the front of the wreckage where Arizona and Jerry were. She looked back. She shouldn’t have. But like Lot’s wife she couldn’t resist. And the image turned her to salt every single time.

When they’d retrieved the body she couldn’t bring herself to look at it. She knew the forest. She knew the scavengers. They had to huddle for warmth all together and leave her all alone to fend off bugs and rodents and larger beasts.

That really was the problem wasn’t it? She’d left her baby sister all alone. Abandoned her. For what? 

Owen rescued her from the mire of dark thoughts she caught herself in too often. “I’ve got an abdominal closure I thought you might want to scrub in on,” he looked almost bashful, “if you’re interested. Looks like the bowel might be a mess.”

Hours with Owen Hunt in the OR. The man who ran off her best friend and stuck them all on that plane. Her boss. The husband who cheated. 

The only person missing Cristina as much as she was.

“Sure. I love a good bowel repair.”

  


####

Breathless Arizona slumped into the chair next to Derek and took a long drink of chilled water. He looked up, studied her briefly, and returned to his own work.

“You know I hate working out,” she said, “I hate it. My dad used to get us up for early morning jogs and swim team to keep us fit and I wanted to kill him. I was seven but seriously considered patricide.”

Derek grunted. Continued his work. It was a strength exercise for his hand.

“And now I have to work out every day and my wife thinks it’s all sexy that I’m sweaty and have a really phenomenal stomach—which is something I’ve never had because, you know, food is delicious, and how do you do it?”

That sentence was odd enough that it gave Derek pause. “Excuse me?”

“You and Meredith are back doing…stuff and my wife looks at me like meat and I want to run.”

“I don’t really—“

She pointed her water bottle towards the vivid series of scars on his forearm. “How does it not freak you out?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been benched because of surgery to save my life.”

Right. The shooting. “Was it a problem then?”

He frowned. “How do you know Meredith and I are doing well?”

“She told me?”

He laughed to himself. “She told you.”

“Sure. We’re friends.”

“You’re her new Cristina.”

“No. I’m just me. You’re not going to find me cuddling in bed with you two any time soon.”

He laughed again. “Good.”

“So how?”

“I don’t kiss and tell Dr. Robbins.”

“Neither do I!”

As they were having their current conversation he clearly didn’t buy that.

“Usually,” she amended. “I’m usually much more reserved. But you spend a few days freezing and bleeding to death in the great outdoors with people and you bond. My dad’s got friends from Vietnam he’d never even **talk** to if it wasn’t for the whole facing death together thing.”

“We’re friends?”

“Meredith and I are.”

“You are.”

There was a note of bitterness in his observation. A hint of jealousy. She’d caught it a few times now and always ignored it. She was used to it usually. She had always been out and proud and awesome and guys would get upset when their girlfriends or wives talked to her. She’d never anticipated it from a long time coworker that actually knew her wife, so she’d avoided it.

“We are just friends. I’m with Callie.”

He smiled again. That little self satisfied smirk that was often interpreted as dreamy. “I have to go.” He stood up abruptly and left Arizona alone in the exercise room with her water bottle.

  


####

Callie had snuck in and watched some of Arizona’s workout and the way her wife manipulated a leg that a lesser surgeon may have amputated, and the way her whole body moved as she worked was enough to—she missed sex. She’d missed sex before Arizona had even gotten on the stupid plane and then the longing for sex had gone away after the crash. For a whole week she’d been less than horny. But over the last month it had all started coming back and her sex drive was in full smoking hot swing and if she didn’t sleep with her wife and soon someone would die.

She wasn’t sure who.

Maybe Kepner. She was unusually perky lately.

After work Callie rushed home with Sofia and got her fed, washed and in bed. It was a little early but Sofia would survive a little extra time in her crib. Arizona wasn’t off until eight anyways. She was doing her first surgery other than an appy since the crash and Callie, being a good and hardy wife knew exactly how to celebrate.

No body paints, because those were not cursed. But definitely lingerie. And other tools of sexiness. She was going to go all out.

She changed and laid across the bed in the most seductive pose she had in her extensive arsenal.

Tonight, come hell or high water, there was going to be some woman on woman action.

  


####

They ran into each other post surgery. It was a big one for both of them. Their longest surgeries since the crash. Arizona was standing out in a light spring mist toying with a cigarette she wouldn’t smoke and Meredith had stepped out to call Cristina with the good news. She knew she wouldn’t answer. It wouldn’t stop her from calling.

But they saw each other—both dressed in their “civvies”—and smiled. Arizona held up the unlit cigarette. “Hemicolectomy on a tiny human,” she said as explanation.

Meredith held up her phone. “Same. Big human.”

“First time I’ve been inside a human and not had to do an appendectomy in over a month.”

“We should celebrate.”

Arizona nodded. “With tequila.”

“Joe’s?”

“Joe’s.”

Shot for shot Meredith Grey held her own. Arizona was something of a heavyweight when it came to booze. More to the point she got drunk quickly but the number of drinks between her duck face and puking were innumerable. Grey seemed to take more to get drunk but she was a gracious drinking partner and didn’t mock Arizona.

“Callie wants to sleep with me,” she said very seriously when they’d moved from shooters to a smooth sipping tequila.

Meredith raised an eyebrow. Sipped her tequila.

“I just don’t get you and Derek. We faced death. We looked at death. **You** looked at death. We’re broken people.” Oh man was she drunk. “How do you do it?”

Meredith had cracked a smile when the tirade began but sobered by the end and considered the question seriously. “One foot in front of the other.”

Arizona looked down at her legs. At the one wrapped up in a brace for the foreseeable future. The sight of her looking at her gimpy leg cracked Meredith up and she laughed out loud realizing her accidental pun.

“Did you see Alex today,” she said, changing subjects and moving away from the maudlin mood she might live in otherwise.

Meredith nodded. “He needs to start dating.”

“No. He can’t. He’s a sucky surgeon when he dates.”

“That’s not—“

“Izzie? Lucy?”

Lexie.

“He’s good.”

“But when he’s not dating he’s awesome.” Arizona finished her tequila and realized, almost immediately, it was a mistake. The room swayed a bit.

“Arizona Robbins you are drunk.” Meredith blinked. “I think I am too.”

That was Joe’s cue to arrive and take their glasses away and put two highballs full of water in front of them wordlessly. Both women kicked them back like they were the shooters from earlier in the evening.

“I should call a cab,” Meredith groused. 

“You should sleep on our couch. Callie can make you breakfast.”

“I don’t want cereal.”

Arizona shook her head. Which was a mistake. But continued, “No, her French toast is amazing.” She paused. “She’s amazing.”

“I’m gonna vomit.”

Arizona swayed back on her stool and tried to figure out if Meredith was serious.

She wasn’t. “I mean, could you be any girlier. Talking about feelings and vaginas and next thing you know you’ll be hugging me.”

“You don’t hug?”

“I don’t hug.”

She stuck her lower lip out. Arizona loved a good hug.

“And pouting. You are pouting. I don’t hang out with pouters.”

“You were the girl in school with pink hair, a nose ring and a love for Kurt Cobain weren’t you?”

“And I bet you were really into,” Meredith considered it a moment, “hair bands,” she blurted drunkenly.

“C+C Music Factory.” Take that! Meredith’s look of horror was priceless. “Also Bikini Kills. I nearly shaved my head but my brother caught me.”

The idea of Arizona as a riot grrl—something she’d been quite proudly at the time—sent Meredith into a deep laughing fit.

“Whatever, you were a grunge fan in Seattle,” she noted a little sourly.

“I bet you wrote your own ‘zine didn’t you?”

“No.” Yes. She made Timothy do the artwork. It wasn’t a big hit in the Robbins’ home. Two years later she was firmly embracing Eric Clapton and bands from the 70s, wearing pink and being so girly most people didn’t even consider the fact that she might be gay. It had been a time.

The laughing took its toll on Meredith and she nearly vomited on the bar. Which was the limit for Joe. He packed them up and sent them both home.

That happened to be just a block down and then up the stairs to Arizona’s apartment. In the elevator Meredith drunk dialed Derek and told him she needed a ride. “He finds me hot,” she said quite proudly after hanging up. “Can’t get enough of me.”

If Arizona weren’t already tasked with staying up right on crutches and a giant leg brace while completely toasted she would have shoved the other woman into the wall of the elevator. 

It dinged open and they stumbled to her apartment. “Be quiet,” she whispered a little too loudly, “Sofia is sleeping.”

Meredith nodded and they fell into the dark apartment. Both froze. Waited. There was no wail of a baby. No wife sitting up blearily on the couch. She glanced at the clock. After ten. Oo. She said she’d be home at eight. Oops.

“I have to pee,” Meredith whispered.

Arizona pointed towards her bedroom. Better to wake her wife than the baby.

Meredith shuffled to the door and pushed it open. Then paused. She was staring. Which Arizona got. Callie was breathtaking. Sleeping in a cami with no makeup she would make Arizona’s heart race. She just wasn’t used to other people—straight women people—being awestruck by the beauty of her wife.

“I’m awake—“ she heard muttered from the bedroom. She click clacked over on her crutches. 

Whatever Meredith was seeing caused her eyes to widen comically.

Suddenly Callie was yelping in shock and Meredith was covering her eyes and falling away from the room. Arizona pushed past her to find her wife breathless, incredibly irritated and totally, gorgeously naked.

Except for the gossamer thin black robe.

And the strap on.


	10. I'm Just A Girl, It's Time To Move On

The woman wasn’t actually on top of Mark. She’d just rolled off him and was still glowing in a very annoying post-coital way. Callie stood in the doorway staring at her best friend and the woman she’d never seen before who looked just out of high school.

“You,” she said—pointing a finger at the woman, “out.”

Mark sat up, “Hey!”

She held up a hand silencing him and reached down to grab the woman’s clothes which she tossed to her. “I’m sure you’re very nice and once you graduate from high school I bet you’ll be even nicer but you need to leave right now. This man is basically a widow and currently raising a child with two lesbians and you do not want that kind of drama. Do you?”

She shook her head and gave Mark mumbled condolences before scuttling out half-naked past Callie.

“Her name was Tiffany and she just graduated college,” Mark said a little smugly. 

“Congratulations. You screwed a fetus. You’re supposed to be watching Sofia today.”

Mark groaned and kicked his legs over the side of the bed. He stretched and moaned in that way only guys pushing, or in his case past, forty made. He pulled some boxers over with his foot and slipped them on.

“I’ve got twenty minutes before I need to come get her. And I could have used those twenty minutes with Tiffany. She likes cooking hamburgers and feels Cartoon Network shows are deeply misunderstood.”

“Mark.”

He rubbed at his face and sighed. “What,” he asked looking directly at her and looking so exhausted, sad and worn out she almost didn’t say it.

“Arizona skipped out on me last night and then dragged Meredith **Grey** home. She used that woman as a buffer and that woman saw me in **things** she should never ever see me in and now I have to go to work and look her in the eye and act like none of it ever happened.”

“Why are you talking to me about this? She’s the one you married. Talk to **her**.”

“I can’t do that.”

“But you can come ruin my morning and unload on me.”

“Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes and pointed towards the door, “Out Torres.”

“Mark—“

“No. You want a project to fix go start with the one you’re living with. I’m doing fine.”

“If you start sleeping with women any younger you’re going to get arrested for statutory rape. That one was the same age as little Sloan!”

Poor choice in words. 

“Callie I really don’t want to deal with you right now.”

Maybe she should have left. But the need to press someone, to point out how stupid everyone was being, was more urgent then her sense of self preservation.

“I’m not going to leave you to wallow in sex instead of dealing with what happened.” She was standing strong. Like Wonder Woman.

“I lost the love of my life Callie. My **soul mate** —“ it was only his passion that kept her from rolling her eyes at the absurd romanticism he’d suddenly attached to his doomed relationship with Lexie Grey. “If I want to grieve by screwing half of Seattle I will! But you—the love of your life is alive. She’s breathing. Sure she’s a grade-A bitch and she’s never met a personal fight she couldn’t run away from—but she’s alive. And hobbled.”

Okay. That was a little funny. “She really can’t run can she,” she asked wryly.

He nodded.

The impulse to leave struck her but Callie instead went and sat on the bed next to Mark. They sat in silence. It was amicable.

“I keep expecting to see her in the elevator.”

She took his hand in her own and he rested his head on her shoulder. “I know,” she said sadly.

“Was there ever as screwed up a relationship as what I had with her?”

“You and Addison.”

“Derek and Addison.”

“Derek and Meredith.”

“You and George.”

“Erica.”

Silence.

“You got to talk to your girl Callie.”

“I know.”

“Let me live my life.”

“Won’t happen Mark.” She pulled away so she could look him in the eye. His were dull. Haggard. He looked like a lost little boy stuck in the body of a man. “You’re my family.”

She pressed her forehead to his and his hands curled around her waist and for just a moment the ache of all their losses dissipated. 

  


####

Meredith stumbled into the kitchen and rubbed at her eye. Derek and Zola were both already seated and looked at her curiously when she fell into the room.

“You were out late last night,” her husband observed cooly.

“Arizona and I went to Joe’s to celebrate our hemocolectomies.”

She came around and kissed her daughter then went to pour some coffee.

“The surgery went well?”

“Better than well. I think I’d forgotten how much fun cutting up bowel could be.”

“I’ve got a craniotomy later today. You should stop by. Brains are way more fun then bowels.”

It was only his second surgery back. The first he’d been extremely reluctant to have her anywhere nearby. He wanted to do it alone. 

“You’re trying to woo me back to neuro?”

He shrugged, “It’s almost,” his eyes narrowed, “lonely there now.”

Without Lexie.

She took the empty seat on the other side of Zola and played with her daughter’s little hands. “I was thinking we need to clean out the room upstairs. I think it might be time.”

Derek always had soft eyes. Eyes that suggested an endless reserve of empathy. He could look at her sometimes with a compassion she’d never thought she deserved. And he did so then.

“You sure?”

“We’re moving anyways right? We should go ahead and do it now.”

He said nothing. Just watched her.

She sipped her coffee. “Did you know Torres owns a strap-on?”

The soft look disappeared into a blank one. He blinked. Then, “Really?”

Pervert was totally interested.

“She was waiting for Arizona when we got back to her place last night.”

“So that’s why you came home?”

“She wasn’t happy.”

“I can say from personal experience that best friends that interfere with your sex life are unpleasant.”

Cristina hopping into their bed and warming her feet. The three of them fast asleep. That would never happen with Arizona. She’d actually been more mortified then her wife.

Derek—ever astute—tilted his head, “Have you talked to Cristina lately?”

“Have you talked to Mark?”

“We do lunch. Almost daily.” When Mark wasn’t banging drug reps fresh off the plane. He sipped his coffee and returned to the newspaper. His tone was casual. “Robbins may be great, but she isn’t Cristina.”

It was an observation others had made. Meredith and Arizona had both made it. Alex had **preached** it. But coming from her husband it was something more.

Derek had always been the emotionally connected one. Meredith had spent three—almost four—years struggling to understand herself and her feelings but Derek had known much sooner. And he knew about her and Cristina. He never got jealous. He rarely got mad. He accepted this other person into their lives with minimum fuss.

And that intuitive man she’d fallen in love with had disappeared since the crash. He’d dug deep to find a way out of the mire they were all stuck in and somehow, all by himself, he’d found a way out. 

And now he was back. Her husband. Sitting across the table from her. Lexie was gone. Cristina was gone. But Derek was there.

  


####

Arizona was sitting on the couch when Callie came back. She was staring straight ahead and she was swallowing compulsively. It was her method of holding back tears. Sofia was on the ground next to the couch playing with her giant blocks and completely oblivious to what was happening.

Callie came closer and noticed the phone forgotten in Arizona’s hand. She took another step. Arizona’s jaw clenched. Her eyes turned hard. Not for Callie. It was simply an external response to whatever was going on in her wife’s head.

“Sweetheart?”

Arizona inhaled through her mouth. Exhaled through her nose. Steeling herself. She looked up at Callie, but the emotions weren’t hidden. Her eyes were wet and she had to look away—down—almost as soon as she made eye contact.

“That was a resort in Belize. They were calling to ask where the remains should be sent.”

Nick was dead.

Callie’s heart fell and with it the rest of her. She knelt sat on the coffee table across from Arizona. Took her hands in her own. “I’m so sorry.” What other words were there?

Arizona tried to smile. It failed. She rubbed at her eyes. “He didn’t tell his sister.” How alike Nick and Arizona had been. Brave to a fault. Reluctant to let go. Blindly stupid in the most tragic of ways. “He asked me to do it—before he left. So I need to go to San Diego, tell her and bury him.”

The plan was already formed in Arizona’s mind. A line between the present and the near future was drawn. And Callie didn’t fail to notice that she had been omitted from it. So she asked, “When do we leave?”

“Callie—“

Mark was right. She had a problem in her own home that needed seeing to and Nick, in his passing, had presented the perfect opportunity. “No. I’m going with you.”

Arizona looked to their daughter. 

“Sofia can stay with Mark. You need me Arizona.”

“Don’t.”

She ignored Arizona. Reached across the small space between them and grasped her hands tightly. “You run. I’ll chase,” she warned.

Arizona’s eyes were inscrutable, the half formed scowl on her lips the only indication that she was irritated.

“I’ve been patient Arizona. With you I’ll **always** be patient, but you need me right now.”

  


####

They’d travelled in silence. To the airport. On the airplane. And even to the hotel. Arizona had pushed ahead of her when they stepped inside and pulled out her laptop to check where Nick’s body was.

Callie had arranged for a funeral home to pick up the remains at the airport and their plan was to go there after speaking with Nick’s sister and picking out a coffin.

She opened another window and checked her parents flight. They were flying from Maryland and wouldn’t be in until later that afternoon. 

“Any word,” Callie politely asked. She could have looked over Arizona’s shoulder but she was giving her space.

“The Colonel and my mom are in at five fifteen.”

“Do I need to pick them up?”

Arizona looked up—surprised at the use of a singular pronoun. She wasn’t—she wasn’t accustomed to having someone like Callie. She’d had Tim and she’d had Nick and she’d even had Nick’s sister but there had always been a little distance. A line no one would dare cross. They were family.

Callie was the partner she’d never known she wanted.

“They’re renting a car,” she said softly.

Callie nodded and made herself busy arranging their bags and hanging their clothes up. 

“Callie?”

Her wife paused.

“When we go to talk to her, could you stay in the car?”

She opened her mouth to object so Arizona had to be faster. “Things didn’t end well, between her and me and she doesn’t really like crying in front of other people. I want to be comfortable.”

“When you say between you…were you—did you date her?”

She choked out a laugh. Did she and Sarah date? The idea of it grossed her out. No it was the opposite. “She was married to Tim.” 

Callie didn’t know what to say.

“When he died she didn’t take it well. None of us did you know? But Nick and I had each other and she was just—she was angry. There were some pretty major fights between the three of us.”

“When was the last time you talked to her?” 

“When I moved from Baltimore.”

She could see it on Callie’s face. Callie didn’t cut ties. Callie still talked to her dead ex-husband’s **mother**. She sent her own mother, a woman who refused to go to her wedding, letters once a month with photos of Sofia. 

“She didn’t know Nick was sick?”

Arizona shook her head. No. She did not.

  


####

Arizona looked nauseous and no amount of leg pats, hugs or gentle words were going to help. She’d pushed her seat all the way back to give allowance for her extended leg but halfway to the sister’s home she’d tilted her seat back and covered her eyes with her hand. 

She’d asked Callie to stay in the car. Gotten as close to begging as Arizona Robbins was ever likely to get. And in the hotel room Callie had agreed. Now out in the sunlight, nearly to this woman’s place she was reconsidering.

She followed the GPS to a small home with white shingles and bright blue trim. It was very East Coast despite them being on the west. There was a SUV in the driveway with a sticker proudly saying that someone’s kid was an honor student.

Beside her Arizona took a deep breath. She tried to give Callie a reassuring smile, but it didn’t quite succeed. “I’ll be right back.”

She watched her wife go and very much wanted to follow. But she didn’t. Arizona had made just one request and the least Callie could do was oblige.

The door opened and a tall woman with Nick’s long face and dark hair opened the door. She studied Arizona a moment then shut the door. Her wife, not to be deterred, knocked. The door opened again. Arizona said something. The woman dissolved into tears. Arizona crossed the threshold and held her.

  


####

Barbara and Daniel’s flight ended up being delayed and when Callie gave her wife the news she accepted it mutely. She’d been inside talking to her sister-in-law for over an hour and when she came out it was alone. Callie told her they were on their own for the evening and she just accepted it.

Seeing that her wife was clearly distressed Callie turned the car back towards the hotel. That drew Arizona’s attention. “Don’t we have a meeting at the funeral home?”

 Apparently they did.

Arizona was bright in the funeral home. She made a few jokes. Spoke fondly of the deceased. Tried to convince the funeral director that Nick really would have wanted a coffin embossed with enamel butterflies.

“You know it’s funny,” she mused while the director ran to get a quote on a mahogany coffin Arizona liked, “when we were kids I’d always tell them exactly what I wanted for my funeral. Lot of flowers and a clown to greet everyone at the door. But now I’m the one always stuck planning **their** funerals.” Arizona turned to look at her wife, “What about you? Am I spreading your ashes in Malaga? Burying you next to Mark?”

It was supposed to be a joke. But Callie honestly had no idea how to reply.

“If, by some mean moment of fate, I manage to die before you,” Arizona continued, “I’d like something small and simple. Just a memorial service. Donate my body to science.” She looked down at the coffee the director had given them when they’d first entered. “This is really good.”

  


####

The dike broke eventually, as all must. You can service them. Scale their walls and patch the holes as you find them. But at some point there are too many holes and not enough little dutch boys to stop the onslaught.

It was after the funeral. Callie stood between her wife and the sister-in-law she didn’t know she had. Her nephew, an eleven year old with Arizona’s blond hair, stood to his mother’s left. Nick’s parents were both gone and most of his friends and coworkers travelled too much to attend so the funeral was small. Just family. Barbara cried. Daniel held her. Arizona was resolute. The cuts on her face had long healed, but in the southern California sun Callie could see traces of them. Faint marks against her tan skin.

Her fully leg brace had been replaced with something smaller and less obtrusive and she’d finally moved from two crutches to just one, but the trauma her wife had experienced was still quite visible. Roiling emotion just behind a dam of facile strength.

She clung to it at the funeral. Stood strong. Held her mother and her father and Nick’s sister. She smiled at her nephew and invited him to meet his cousin sometime. Afterwards they all went out for coffee and traded stories about Nick. And Tim. 

And Arizona was so strong. So good.

It was back in the hotel. Callie flopped on the bed and pulled out a magazine. Arizona went to take a shower. The water stopped. The door opened. And Arizona just stood there. Her face immutable. 

Once upon a time Callie wouldn’t have known how to react. She might have ignored it. Or rushed to hug her. But she’d learned things over the years. She used to not get her wife and she’d happily turned away from ever trying to understand her. But somewhere between the sight of her fresh off a plane from Africa and their wedding things had started to click. The mystery of her wife had become clear.

Now…now she understood her wife and when she stepped out of the shower in a t-shirt and a leg brace with her hair still wet and that blank look on her face Callie understood her a little more.

“You did good. Today.”

Cracks in the facade. Arizona nodded.

“They would have been proud.”

“But they all leave.” 

Callie might have argued that point once. Tim and Nick’s deaths weren’t choices. They were tragedies. She said nothing. This was Arizona processing. Interanlizing everything until a moment of catharsis. 

“And I’m always okay.” She looked away. Looked up. Callie couldn’t say anything. Even if she’d wanted to.

Tim went away to war. And died. And Nick ran away from death and it caught up to him anyways.

“It’s not just Tim and Nick. It’s our car crash. And that gunman. I was at the front of the plane Callie. Statistically that’s the worst place to be, but it was Lexie who died. And I walked away with a new knee and some metal in my leg.”

“You were—“

“Lucky? Why? That’s what I don’t get Callie. Why me? I’m a great doctor and a good wife but my brother was a wonderful husband and a **good** father. So why me?”

There was no easy answer. It was a question surgeons dealt with daily. One they wrestled and one they often overcame. How one could survive and another could die. Life was fickle, the unseen threads of existence that kept them all in place were impossible to understand.

And Arizona knew that. It wasn’t about answering the question. It was just about asking it.

It was saying it. Wondering out loud how cruel the world could be that finally did it. The first few tears could be ignored easily enough. But then they continued and a sniffle turned into a sob and Callie was up and catching her wife in her arms before she hit the ground.

Arizona clung to her as she cried. Held on more tightly than she’d ever had. There were no words. No wails of misery from Arizona or attempts at comfort from Callie. Only tactile relief. Long kisses and soft hands and two women wrapping themselves up in each other. Trying to live just a little bit longer. Riding the waves of grief and just…moving on.

  


####

She’d stolen the ashes. Not all of them. Most were interred because that what her father and her half-sister desired. But she’d taken just a small amount. A snack baggie full. She’d kept it in her locker and every day she’d open her locker and look at the ashes and try, as hard as she could, to think of where they should go. Down the drain like her mother? Over a cliff. Out on the beach.

She thought about asking Mark. Or Derek. She even almost broached the subject to Alex and Arizona. But she never did. She just walked back in and looked at those ashes resting inert in her locker.

They were the last thing left of Lexie. Her bedroom was cleared out. Her belongings packed up and given away. Everyone had a memento or two, but they were no longer Lexie’s things. Just bits of minutiae to remember her by.

These ashes sitting in her locker were all that was left of a sister she’d never wanted but had managed to love so deeply.

She missed Lexie. More than she thought she would have. But what was worse wasn’t the missing, it was all the possibilities shattered. They’d never steal each other’s surgeries or play on the floor with Zola. She’d never get to tell her how much she’d meant. Never get to find out if Lexie really understood the depth of her love for her. She’d never watch Lexie get married in a big stupid overblown Izzie-style wedding or get a niece or nephew. She’d never get to **really** apologize for those first few months they knew each other.

It was all gone.

Nothing left but some gray ashes in a baggie in her locker.

“You know, staring at your dead sister’s earthly remains that you’ve stuffed into your locker might be considered creepy.”

She wouldn’t smile. That wasn’t what Meredith Grey did. She turned. Cristina was wearing her leather jacket and leaning against the door.

“You’re back.”

“Mayo blows. Teddy might not be here, but I get a way bigger research stipend because of it. And I get to tell Kepner what to do in the OR.”

“I missed you too.”

That was all that needed to be said. Cristina nodded in apology and acceptance then clapped her hands together loudly. “Okay! So what are we going to do with Lexie? Because pouring her down the sink to spend eternity with your mom is just cruel…”

And like a rubber band the world snapped back into shape. Maybe a little different. But change could be good right?

  


The End.


End file.
